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Champs Windies must win today

The year 2016 turned out to be a wonderful one for Windies. They won the ICC Under-19 World Cup by defeating India in Bangladesh.

The senior teams—men and women—went on to win the ICC World T20 in India.

Two years later, Windies’ senior team is struggling to qualify for the ICC World Cup in England in 2019. And the Under-19 team faces the danger of becoming the first team to be eliminated from the World Cup in this edition in New Zealand. Windies lost their opening clash against New Zealand and now face South Africa. Their last game will be against Kenya but they wouldn’t want to leave it too late and their fate on other results. If Windies go on to lose the clash, New Zealand and South Africa will most likely go through to the quarterfinals.

Keagan Simmons and Kimani Melius struck half-centuries in the first game but no other batsmen managed to go past 26. That’s the first thing they need to rectify and give the bowlers more cushion. The bowling too failed to impress after the below-par show from the batsmen.

One thing is for sure, South Africa will not present anything on the platter to the team from the Caribbean. It was ruthless against Kenya and went on to post the highest total of the tournament so far—341—after a century from Raynard van Tonder. Both teams can’t take anything for granted but there’s more at stake for Windies at the moment.